Abstract [en]

Additive manufacturing is a process in which a product is created by joining material together, as oppose to traditional machine manufacturing processes which are so called subtractive manufacturing methods where a product is created by removing material form a raw material. In this manufacturing method a CAD-model of the product is created. In the production the additive manufacturing machine constantly reads the models cross section and adds material layer by layer until the product is finished. The purpose of this work is to examine whether or not additive manufacturing methods can be used to replace conventional building methods when constructing single family houses in the future. In this work it is also examined to what extent this could be possible. To answer this examinations, besides those on conventional methods, are also carried out on a method of building houses with prefabricated building elements, as this could be a potential competitor to the additive manufacturing methods. The building process of each of the building methods and important aspects that should be taken into account are investigated to give the basis to make a comparison between the pros and the cons of the different methods. The aspects that are compared are as follows: Work safety-related, economical, environmental, certain qualitative, temporal and potentially limiting aspects. After analyzing this information a conclusion is made that there is only one additive manufacturing currently has the potential to build single family houses in a near future and this method is called “Contour Crafting”. The reason for this is that there isn't any other additive manufacturing process that is developed for large-scale production and which is deemed to have the technical possibility to build single family homes in a near future. This additive manufacturing method is deemed to have substantial benefits in several important aspects in comparison to both the other building methods. For instance it's about 50 times as time efficient, compared to conventional building methods, when it comes to building a house from the point in which the preparatory work of the house foundation is finished to having a complete unfurnished house. The conclusion of this work is that it is technologically possible for the additive manufacturing method to be used to build single family houses in a near future and to a great extent. The factors which limits this extent is that the method can't use as many different types of building materials as the other methods and that it might not be able to fulfill different areas building codes which conventional building methods and houses built by prefabricated building elements fulfill. The data that has been used in this work comes from scientific papers, literary works, an interview with an industrial doctoral student from KTH and a mail correspondence with the inventor of Contour Crafting.